The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin

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      Macdonald looks sad as he faces the 1878 election. Was his career a failure?

      His magic touch as a speaker was captured by one observer, writing in 1883 after Macdonald had returned to office. “Sometimes, by a familiar word or two, you see him levelling distinctions between himself and the audience.” As a result, all those present — farmers, labourers, tradesmen — “feel that they and the prime-minister are assembled there on a common mission — the prime-minister only happens to be prime minister, and speaking then; anyone else, also, might have been.” Yet gradually, the crowd realized “that the speaker is the man who is doing their work the best.” Macdonald broke down barriers between himself and his hearers: “the I is lost in the we.” In 1876–77, when it still seemed unlikely that he would return to office, he varied the theme, praising audiences for their disinterested support for a politician who might never reward them. “How was it, he sometimes asked himself, that he without means, power or patronage … should be so received?” he mused, praising the “British fair play” of Brockville picnickers in 1877.

      Macdonald’s critics claimed that he built up support networks by handing out jobs, and he was certainly ruthless in manipulating expectations of patronage, which often remained unfulfilled. But he could never have amassed the 133,633 votes he won across Ontario in 1878, and the still larger number in the rest of Canada, purely by dangling individual favours. If anything, the reverse was true: Macdonald inspired fervent support among people who felt nobly patriotic simply because they idolized “John A.” “There was nothing that his followers would not do or suffer for him,” and this devotion was “strong among those who had never even seen him.” But, in their turn, those dedicated and high-minded supporters felt entitled to rebuke and correct their leader for his human failings. “It is not because you are deemed faultless that this large Assembly has met to do you honour,” Macdonald was told at Simcoe in 1876. Modern spin-doctors would be horrified at riding officials telling their leader that “if you erred in the administration of affairs your errors were of judgment and not of intention.” However, Macdonald humbly accepted the reprimand, confessing to “acts of omission and commission which I regret” but consoling himself that his supporters accepted that “I was acting … for the interest of our common country.” Most politicians are judged by their deeds rather than their intentions: John A. Macdonald led a charmed life as a special exception.

      Reviewing the political scene at the close of 1877, the Montreal Gazette noted that the picnics had raised Macdonald’s popularity to levels “few people could have anticipated,” and predicted that he would “sweep the country” at the upcoming general election. The claim, even from a friendly newspaper, would hardly have been credible two years earlier. One Conservative supporter who had mixed feelings about the come-back was the leader’s wife, who had spent the past two years home-making in Toronto. Agnes had to tread carefully. “My lord and master … simply lives to please and gratify me” at home, but Macdonald was “absolutely tyrannical in his public life,” snubbing her if she commented on political matters. In July 1878, she plucked up courage to ask whether the forthcoming election would take them back to Ottawa. “If we do well, we shall have a majority of sixty,” he replied; “if badly, forty.”

      Canadians voted on September 17, 1878. On election night, veteran Liberal Luther Holton watched as telegrams flooded into a Montreal newsroom announcing a Conservative sweep — not by forty, nor sixty, but a majority of eighty seats. Eventually, Holton broke his silence with the comment: “Well! John A. beats the devil.” Macdonald had certainly vanquished two personal demons: he had overcome his alcohol problem, and his election victory drew a line under the humiliating Pacific Scandal. One setback clouded the victory: after thirty-three years as their MP, Macdonald was rejected in Kingston as the “Do-Nothing Deserter” who had moved to Toronto. He was quickly elected as absentee member for Victoria in British Columbia. Campbell consoled him, “if you were defeated in Kingston, you have been elected by the Dominion.”

      7

      1878–1886

      The Realization of All My Dreams

      When Canada’s first prime minister died in 1891, a sorrowing colleague claimed that the history of Canada for the previous fifty years was “the life of Sir John Macdonald.” That was an exaggeration, but during his final term as prime minister, Macdonald’s life and Canada’s history were closely entwined — perhaps too closely. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 should have crowned his career, but the triumph was marred by Louis Riel’s Western uprising that same year. Far from departing the scene in triumph, he would spend the last five years of his life fire-fighting a series of threats, most of them knock-on problems from the crisis of 1885.

      Macdonald’s National Policy introduced a firm political dividing line, making it harder for “loose fish” to switch parties — although one Quebec senator jumped to the Liberals, complaining at Macdonald’s inability to speak French. However, Western demands for inclusion in the system, coupled with the overwhelming financial needs of the railway, forced representatives of the older provinces into defensive blocks: at crucial moments, Macdonald was held to ransom by his own supporters. In many respects, he remained the Ontario leader, dealing with other provinces through allies rather than subordinates. As late as 1878, Macdonald had never visited New Brunswick, and he did not travel west of Lake Huron until 1886. Negotiations to recruit the Halifax lawyer John Thompson to Cabinet in 1885 were conducted through his Nova Scotian colleagues. The prime minister’s first direct approach began: “I am of course aware that you have been asked to join our ministry.” Careful negotiations were required to secure the “cordial assent” of existing ministers to the appointment of Thomas White in 1885 — necessary, Macdonald assured him, because the fifty-four-year-old White would “be a Minister long after I am off the stage.” Sadly, White died of overwork three years later. Above all, Macdonald had no control over Quebec, where his lieutenant, Hector Langevin, was constantly undermined by party rivals.

      The “Old Man” preferred to work with associates he had known for years: it took seven years for any MP from the 1878 intake to make it into Cabinet. Initially, he based his team on two stalwarts, Tilley as finance minister to launch the National Policy, Tupper to drive the Pacific Railway project. But Tilley was exhausted by 1885, while from 1883 Tupper preferred the post of High Commissioner in London, although he remained semi-involved in domestic politics. David Macpherson had helped rear Macdonald’s son during Isabella’s illness in 1856: Macdonald put him in charge of the West in 1883. The prime minister was deeply attached to John Henry Pope, the loyal, gruff Anglo-Quebecker who once dismissed three Cabinet colleagues as “smaller than the little end of nothing.” Macdonald first met him in 1849; they had been parliamentary colleagues since 1857. When “John Henry” (who was not related to the prime minister’s secretary, “Joe” Pope) worked himself to death in 1889, Macdonald broke down making the announcement to the Commons.